Sunday, November 8, 2015

Mike Ngo

Alexander Broughton
Week 7
Section A02

I am not Asian American. I am not a minority, but I found Mike Ngo’s article oddly relatable.  Ngo talked about the status quo and its effects of prisoners. Hearing about another public shooting, he recalls a commentator asking “How can we as a community not see the signs that lead up to a tragedy?” He responds by saying that you can hear chains and nothingness around your neck clinking against your ribs, and the sound is “unmistakable.” I believe that the chains are the status quo, the way the social majority panoptically preserves you to be. The status quo shows that nothing is wrong, everything is supposed to be perfect. According to him, you can “hear the chains” the best at night. I believe that this is because during the day, you cannot notice the chains as they are surrounded by the noise of the status quo. Doing the same thing day in and day out, you don’t have time to notice the chains. I have always felt that everything was supposed to be perfect, and I would often go into denial of any issue that hit me, and I forgot about just being myself. Beyond myself however, Asian Americans today are constantly held in a panoptic prison brought on by the Model Minority Myth that they forget to notice their own individuality. In order to fight institutionalized racism in the United States, Asian Americans must find a way to come to terms with their cultural individualism and their fair and equal place as Americans.


Question: How can Asian Americans challenge the status quo and maintain their transnational identity at the same time?


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